SCCUR and Its History

Southern California Conferences for Undergraduate Research (SCCUR) is an organization of Southern California faculty, administrators, and interested members of the community who share the common goal of improving education for college and university students through hands-on experiences of undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity. SCCUR supports inquiry-based education, in which students learn while doing, working closely with faculty mentors on significant academic projects and presenting their results to audiences in a professional manner.

In November 1993, a group of educators in the greater Los Angeles area organized the first interdisciplinary Southern California Conference for Undergraduate Research at the California Institute of Technology. Since then the conference has been hosted annually by a local institution, always on the Saturday before Thanksgiving:

Caltech (93, 94, 02)

The Claremont Colleges (95)

The Claremont Colleges, Harvey Mudd College (15)

Occidental College (96, 06)

CSU Los Angeles (97, 07)

Cal Poly Pomona (98, 08)

Loyola Marymount University (99)

CSU Long Beach (00)

UCLA (01)

UC Irvine (03)

Whittier College (04,13)

UC Riverside (05)

CSU Dominguez Hills (09)

Pepperdine University (10)

Mount San Antonio College (11)

CSU Channel Islands (12)

CSU Fullerton (14)

UC Riverside (05, 16)

In recent years SCCUR’s conference has drawn from seven to nine hundred undergraduate student participants presenting their work in the form of oral presentations, posters, and creative exhibits and performances, as well as their faculty mentors and guests. Participants come from approximately 80 institutions in Southern California and the rest of the nation, with some international presenters.

To enhance its ability to create opportunities for undergraduate research, SCCUR became a nonprofit United States Internal Revenue Service certified tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. Individual, foundation, and corporate donations to SCCUR are tax deductible.